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AIS-catcher Architecture

Usage Profiles

AIS-catcher follows a modular architecture that can scale from simple to complex configurations to cater for various use cases.

Receiver

Minimal decode & output

Aggregator

Route & filter streams

Database

Log to PostgreSQL

Experimenter

Multi-SDR testing

Map Viewer

Built-in visualization

Basic Data Flow

In its simplest form, AIS-catcher processes data through three main stages:

Basic Flow Input Model Output

Documentation Structure

The documentation is organized along these lines.

Input
Examples: RTL-SDR, Airspy, network streams, files.

Model
Message decoding and processing. AIS-catcher includes various decoding models for experimentation.

Output
Examples: screen display, file logging, network streaming, database storage

Key Casing (CLI vs JSON)

  • In JSON configuration files, keys are case-sensitive and should be lowercase.
  • On the command line, setting names passed after a device/output switch (e.g. -gr, -gm, -u, -H) are not case-sensitive.
  • In this documentation, tables show setting names in lowercase to match JSON.

Advanced Architecture

For more complex setups, AIS-catcher supports multiple inputs with input-specific models:

Advanced Architecture Input 1 Input 2 Model A1 Model A2 Model B Output 1 Output 2 Output 3

In this advanced setup: Multiple input sources operate independently. Each input can use multiple specialized models for decoding. Each model can send data to one or more multiple outputs.